by Xavier Lancel

Welcome to a new analysis of the Marvel sales. Reminder: I’m French, that’s why I’m talking funny. Please address your complaints to my “guess where I will force Heidi to eat smelly cheese later this month” country. For any information about the French magazine on US comics I’m editing -running for a prize during Angouleme FCBD, wish me luck!-, please send me a message using my e-mail address from any of my own commentaries.

You’ll notice that, starting this month, I ranked the Marvel books with their rank among all the Marvel titles, not from the top 300. This way, you will perhaps see more clearly which rank each title has among the Marvel catalog.

Hey, look at all those titles suddenly doubling or tripling their readership! Marvel is so awesome! They can make people jump onboard their titles because everything they produce is amazing and so properly marketed. That’s probably the official version. The reality if that many shops HAD TO double their order on many secondary titles so that they could receive specific Legacy variants cover. That’s why many of them saw such a spike in sales this month.What will happen to all those extra copies on the rack? Well, it will either be the $1 bin, or the “let’s hide it in a dark pack of mystery comics” or “let’s give it away to customers, if we are lucky one of them will perhaps like it and follow the monthly.”

As I stated before, Marvel is pretty happy about the situation. They sell their comics to the shops, after that, be they read or not, that’s not their problem. The advantage of not having a customer reading it is that he or she will not be disappointed. People buying comics mostly for their covers, they know exactly what they’re gonna have: a cover they already saw in the Marvel Previews catalog or solicitations. Readers are way more difficult to keep. So Marvel is still and again putting a large chunk of their efforts to sell their covers. If, in the process, some people actually buy a copy at the shop and open it to read it, then that’s up to the creative team to make it so that they will not be disapointed. Anyway, Marvel can really thank the shops. They are the ones who took all the risks, buying products they know they would not be able to sell, putting faith into the fact that it was the best move for them to not lose customers in the long term. Comic shops are the ones thinking long term because their lives are at stake. Support your local comics shop, folks!

A “wave” of cancellation has been announced or logically deducted from reading Marvel 2018 solicitations. There is no surprise in the list. Some people complained that they saw a massive unjustified blow to diversity in that. That is quite unfair. You can blame Marvel for a lot of things but certainly not for ending those titles. Of course, some of them are “diversity titles”, but that’s simply because Marvel has been launching mostly “diversity titles” of late.

You can always find a way to blame Marvel. They cancel Generation X? That’s a blow to diversity because it featured kids! Let’s be fair: Marvel has given of late quite a long rope (12 issues) almost to every title, despite atrocious sales. What will take the place of all those cancellations? I fear X-men team titles could multiply like Avengers books did during half a decade. And Old Man version or mixed upgraded version of characters, probably with claws and guns, because it looks cool on the covers, could also multiply like the plague.

Reminder: those sales are estimates, sales to comics shops located in North America. American comics do get sold somewhere else in their original floppy edition. Keep also in mind that it’s not because a copy is sold to a shop that it’s sold to a customer. This would be way too easy. Digital sales are not taken into account.

What?! Only $6? Marvel, you disappoint me. You could have try to charge at least $8 for this. And the arc is called “Death of the Mighty Thor.” I hope Beta Ray Bill’s life insurance is good, because I can’t see Marvel killing off one its more popular “new” character.

Start of the next to last arc by Dan Slott, pushed by all the gimmicks possible. There is a t-shirt variant. No, really, a T-SHIRT variant, reproduction of some used art from the 60’s. I can’t wait for the underwear variants and their cover bulges!

Start of a new arc, “Gwenom”. That’s exactly what you fear. Do you know there is a Weapon H series in the starting blocks? A mix between Hulk and Wolverine. Mixing characters is the new trend. TPB Vol. 4 is out and its sales are disappointing (less than 2K!) and the non-activity of the previous volumes is worrying for the future.

This one is one of the few titles which will probably retain a good chunk of this months buyers, as it is entering a series of two toe-to-toe events remakes, with Hulk going back to Planet Hulk and then coming back to destroy everyone on Earth. And, if it works, we will enter a succession of events remakes in every Marvel title, and then Marvel will cry again that the market is crashing. Everything is a remake.

Hellstorm is the new Wasp. I mean, he has again a new costume! The difference is that Hellstorm looks good in it. Kill me, but I am curious about this one, as it feature a bunch of rejected characters whom are waiting for their turn to shine (again).

Now perhaps, they will think twice before putting it on hiatus for several months just to relaunch it. The damage remains contained as it is pretty stable since issue #3 and that TPB sales are still piling up.

I thought the whole point of the remake of the X-Men line was to reduce it to a smaller but more relevant line of titles. I guess I was quite wrong. There will be soon 5 different core X-Men team titles.

Tanking. This would worried me a little about Dan Slott’s departure from Amazing. I guess we will soon have the answer about what kept all those readers buying Amazing and not the rest of the Marvel catalog or others Spider-Man titles.

Marvel should have put a “must buy to deblock variant “condition on the last issue of this mini. It would have sold 4 times better, whith nobody reading it!

77- MARVEL LEGACY
10/17 Marvel Legacy - 303,576 [+5,332]

Reorders make it crack the 300K. Impressive? Not that much if you consider that 75% of the Marvel universe titles sell below 1/10 of that. So yeah, big time, Marvel managed to sell many copies of that to the shop and to a large chunk of customers perhaps, but that clearly doesn’t make them buy their “real” titles.

Thanks for reading until the end! I hope to see you next time. Meanwhile, feel free to comment, express your rage or your love for french sarcasm! I’ll hug everyone, no matter what.

Xavier Lancel, born 1973 in France, living in the beautiful city of Lyon, has been working since 1999 for Scarce, one of the longest running fanzines on US comics (32 years old!). He has been editor of the magazine since 2008. He also runs two blogs, one devoted to Ernie Colon (http://erniecolonunlimited. blogspot.fr/) and the other devoted to barechested men in comics (http://chestofchests. blogspot.fr/). He sometimes appears as a comics character (because French people are funny-weird) in strips by Tim Fish (http://www.timfishworks. blogspot.fr/).

Heidi MacDonald is the founder and editor in chief of The Beat. In the past, she worked for Disney, DC Comics, Fox and Publishers Weekly. She can be heard regularly on the More To Come Podcast. She likes coffee, cats and noble struggle.

I should add – enjoy your sarcasm because it is the only way to engage with what Marvel is doing here. I can’t believe some books were posting 2-3 times normal sales just to buy variants that didn’t work.

I think changing the number to the Marvel-only rank instead of the all-publishers rank is a really bad idea. It really obscures how Marvel is faring in the marketplace as a whole. It’s already easy to see how each title compares to other Marvel titles (because they’re in order in the list!), but this change makes it really hard to compare publisher to publisher.

Don’t listen the haters Xavier. The snark is why people love these columns. Otherwise they can just read the sales figures alone elsewhere.
I’m surprised Legacy #1 got a 2nd print. Marvel really wasted that. Creative teams should have been changed over and the originals should have been brought back. Instead they literally change nothing and wonder why sales on all titles go back down after the Lenticular gimmick.
Also, I keep thinking the Lady Thor ‘death’ is just a bait and switch. Like you said, shes the most popular of the ‘new’ characters and SHE’S the one they get rid of? Unless Aaron just wants to leave the title maybe?

“It really obscures how Marvel is faring in the marketplace as a whole.”
i understand but this being a Marvel sales column -and because there is a lot of others columns here comparing beetween publishers-, I thought this might be a good idea.
Let’s wait next month because I’ll add a “progression ranking” next to eah number. I did that because it’s not because a title is a little low in the top300 that is means that it’s faring bad for Marvel comparing to it’s others titles.
Well, that’s a test, we’ll see and switch back if it doesn’t work.
Thanks for the comments and feedback anyway. :)
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Creative teams should have been changed over and the originals should have been brought back. Instead they literally change nothing and wonder why sales on all titles go back down after the Lenticular gimmick.
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Exactly. I looked at the solicits, and there was literally no change for me from pre- to post-Legacy. They made a big deal about shaking things up, but it was pretty hard to see a difference when storylines and creative teams almost all continued unabated. It’s pretty clear that Marvel needed some kind of change, and maybe the departures of Bendis and Alonso will help. If so, who knows when new plans will be able to kick in. If they already have, we may be in trouble.

Please keep up the snark, Xavier, a little humour lightens the gloom. ;)

Would it be possible to keep the top300 sales ranking as well as the Marvel ranking? It is interesting to get a sense of how each title is competing against other comics in the market, not just other Marvel comics. But of course, you do the hard work of composing these articles, so it is your decision how to write them.

Thank you Michael, I really thought there was only one guy in charge of all the sollicitations texts or that it was done by the assistant editor. I would hate to write those, That’s pretty challenging.

A lot of long overdue cancellations finally being handed out. Marvel would do well to have a seminar to teach people like Breevort, Bemis and Antos how to interact with the fans instead of running them off.